The Late Victorian Army 1868 1902

This volume, part of a nine-volume series on the British Army which aims to enhance the military aspect of the work with social, economic and political factors, is specifically concerned with the late Victorian period and addresses topics such as the Cardwell reforms, rank and file and training.

The Scottish Soldier and Empire, 1854-1902 reflects upon the iconic role of the Scottish soldier as an empire builder from the Crimean War to the end of the nineteenth century. It examines how the soldier commented on this imperial experience, largely through letter, diaries and poems published in the provincial press, how his exploits were reviewed in Scotland and how military achievements contributed to both a growing sense of national identity and a deepening degree of imperial commitment.

Offers a revised and updated history of thirteen of the most significant British conflicts during the Victorian period.

This book offers a detailed investigation of George S. White’s career in the British Army. It explores late Victorian military conflicts, British power dynamics in Africa and Asia, civil-military relations on the fringes of the empire, and networks of advancement in the army. White served in the Indian Rebellion and, twenty years later, the Second Anglo-Afghan War, where he earned the Victoria Cross. After serving in the Sudan campaign, White returned to India and held commands during the conquest and pacification of Upper Burma and the extension of British control over Balochistan, and, as Commander-in-Chief, sent expeditions to the North-West Frontier and oversaw major military reforms. Just before the start of the South African War, White was given the command of the Natal Field Force. This force was besieged in Ladysmith for 118 days. Relieved in 1900, White was heralded as the “Defender of Ladysmith.” He was made Field-Marshal in 1903.

The Scottish soldier has been at war for over 2000 years. Until now, no reference work has attempted to examine this vast heritage of warfare.A Military History of Scotland offers readers an unparalleled insight into the evolution of the Scottish military tradition. This wide-ranging and extensively illustrated volume traces the military history of Scotland from pre-history to the recent conflict in Afghanistan. Edited by three leading military historians, and featuring contributions from thirty scholars, it explores the role of warfare in the emergence of a Scottish kingdom, the forging of a Scottish-British military identity, and the participation of Scots in Britain's imperial and world wars. Eschewing a narrow definition of military history, it investigates the cultural and physical dimensions of Scotland's military past such as Scottish military dress and music, the role of the Scottish soldier in art and literature, Scotland's fortifications and battlefield archaeology, and Scotland's military memorials and museum collections.

The story of the British army, from its inception in the late seventeenth century to the present. This new concise history by one of Britain's leading military historians explores the British army from the creation of a permanent standing army in the seventeenth century to the present. It sets the institutional development of the British army, and its often ambiguous relationship with state and society, as well as the army's wider political, social, economic, and cultural role within international, imperial, national, regional, and local contexts. An army exists to fight, however, and the British army's story cannot be separated from those wars and conflicts that have punctuated its evolution. Consequently, attention is also paid to the army's commanders, operations, and battlefields from the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the seventeenth century to Iraq and Afghanistan in the twenty-first. Beckett traces the army's evolution through five chronological phases: the standing army of the seventeenth century and its antecedents, the national army of the eighteenth century, the imperial army of the nineteenth century, the people's army of the two world wars, the era of national service, and the return to a small professional army fulfilling a global role envisaged by successive governments in the twenty-first century at a time of rapidly changing social attitudes towards the utility of force, that pose a challenge to the army's traditional core values.

The regular Mounted Infantry was one of the most important innovations of the late Victorian and Edwardian British Army. Rather than fight on horseback in the traditional manner of cavalry, they used horses primarily to move swiftly about the battlefield, where they would then dismount and fight on foot, thus anticipating the development of mechanised infantry tactics during the twentieth century. Yet despite this apparent foresight, the mounted infantry concept was abandoned by the British Army in 1913, just at the point when it may have made the transition from a colonial to a continental force as part of the British Expeditionary Force. Exploring the historical background to the Mounted Infantry, this book untangles the debates that raged in the army, Parliament and the press between its advocates and the supporters of the established cavalry. With its origins in the extemporised mounted detachments raised during times of crisis from infantry battalions on overseas imperial garrison duties, Dr Winrow reveals how the Mounted Infantry model, unique among European armies, evolved into a formalised and apparently highly successful organisation of non-cavalry mounted troops. He then analyses why the Mounted Infantry concept fell out of favour just eleven years after its apogee during the South African Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. As such the book will be of interest not only to historians of the nineteenth-century British army, but also those tracing the development of modern military doctrine and tactics, to which the Mounted Infantry provided successful - if short lived - inspiration.